I’m already starting to think forward to the large amount of rust repair I’ll be doing, and stumbled across this site:
If It Jams.com: The Omni Project – Rusted Out Unibody
I’m hoping that my situation isn’t nearly as bad, but this Mr. Rosenthal is certainly inspiring.
I’ve neglected the project blog page. It has become most convenient to just take some video with the iPhone, edit it, and shoot it up to YouTube and throw a Facebook post up. That’s all fine and dandy if you’re my “friend” and are interested in the car.
So far, there have been four video updates. Here they are, and I’m going to add some permalink stuff up top for them at some point:
Update 1: Where I fail to remove the fuel filter and play around finding the pistons.
Update 2: Where I finally remove the fuel filter and long-winded-ly talk about other stuff.
Update 4: Now we try to take the rest of the harness and vacuum lines off.
This blog needs to serve as the focus of the rebuild effort. I have failed to do that. It’s late and I need to be sleeping right now, but detailed write-ups of what’s been going on shall be posted here soon.
I’m working right now to document and remove all of the harness and vacuum connections, then onto the clutch cable, and transmission linkages, pull the axles, and then we’re ready to remove the engine.
It turns out that the shop manual does have all the details, if you know where to look. The radiator fan power connector is on the right side of the car, underneath the radiator.
The fan on the left side, by the coolant overflow reservoir, is indeed the A/C condenser fan, and the two connectors attached to it are the “compressor connector”, and the “condenser fan motor connector”. The compressor connector is routing the A/C relay lines from the other side of the car by the air box.
I’m guessing, without having the car in front of me, that both fan motor connectors are the green barrel type, and the compressor connector is the rubber-booted one.
I finally pulled the radiator tonight, and it was pretty ugly.
The thing had all kinds of interference trying to get it out, namely the oxygen sensor, and a whole bunch of parts over on the right side where the A/C compressor was.
I punted to the CRXCommunity forums, in this post. Thankfully, “warbird” clued me in to something with his statement:
“Removing the fan and shroud from the radiator will give you more room to wiggle the radiator around. Also the headers take up a little more room than the stock exhaust did, but you should still be able to get the radiator out.”
Ah hah! I don’t have the OEM exhaust manifold/headers. “warbird”‘s post clicked the light on in my head. I had thought that perhaps this is a symptom of subtle front end damage, since everything seemed really tight and unnaturally close together.
That makes sense, because I was wondering why they were missing the heat shield and were not the shape I was seeing in the shop manual. This is an aftermarket non-OEM header, which explains why the oxygen sensor is where it is and there’s a very tight fit. I’ll be looking for an OEM exhaust header to replace this. Chalk it up to me being a completely fresh novice.
Back out into the garage and start taking the radiator fan off. I’ve got two fans in there, and the shop manual has no mention of the second fan. I’m discovering that the shop manual leaves a lot of details out, which is what anyone who is experienced working on these things probably knows very well already.
The fasteners that hold the fan onto the radiator are these weird captive bolts, and the first one came out easily. Of course, the second one did not. I ended up breaking my first part on the car: one of the little plastic brackets that holds the fan onto the top radiator tank.
At first it was very irritating, but very soon I won’t be as concerned, as you shall see.
The radiator finally came most of the way out after removing the first fan and shroud, but was still hanging up on “something”. That something turned out to be the little stub lines sticking out of the bottom. I don’t even know what their purpose is, but the right one was hanging up on an A/C line underneath. A little coercion with my prybar on the line (gently), and I worked the little stub free and that was that.
The only thing left to do was to remove the connector inside of the dry-rotted but still intact rubber boot. Wormed my fingers in there, squeezed, and it came apart. Looks like there was a liberal amount of dielectric grease in there. Good thing for that.
Once the radiator was out, I noticed that the fins along the bottom were like dust. They rained out all over the place, and it seems that the radiator will need to be replaced.
The only mystery remaining is that the “second fan” appears to be OEM but I’m not sure what its purpose is. More pouring through the shop manual is apparently in order. Also, the bottom radiator mounts were rusted out and just crumbled away. Those need replacing too.
The A/C condenser looks to be in good shape, but the line routing looks a bit hokey.
What is the purpose of that big loop on the line going to the condenser? I am considering just pulling all of the A/C crap out for now, since it’s completely discharged anyway. A/C is going to come after the body work, which is still way down the line.
It is going to be a fun project. I’m already thinking about that moment when I fire the engine up and take it for a test drive.
Last Thursday I did a little shopping at Harbor Freight and picked up the three shelf service cart, the 1,000 lb engine stand, another oil drain pan, some flarenut wrenches, and some other assorted things.
Last night, I crawled underneath to take a look at everything. From my untrained eye, there is no unexpected or hidden damage to the suspension and drivetrain components. There’s some rust here or there, but I think that a good wire brushing, rust conversion, and POR-15 (or equivalent) treatment will mitigate any rusting.
I looked at the axles, the steering rack, the control arms, the engine mounts, etc. The right CV axle boot has a tear in it, so that axle will be replaced. There’s a mystery grease on the right side of the transmission which has me concerned as well, but I think it might be grease slung out of the axle boot.
Even the exhaust system does not look like it would be impossible to take apart. The “spring bolts” that hold the down pipe to the flange that heads aft looks like with enough PBlaster, I’ll be able to take them apart.
The only concern I have is on the unibody structure. There are two areas that seem to be cut away and rusty, on either side of the car, that worry me.
Since I’m pulling the engine, I decided to move along and follow the shop manual procedure, but also pull the radiator out while I’m at it. If I’m rebuilding or replacing the engine, it would be prudent to look at, clean up, and mitigate rust on the entire engine bay and all of its parts.
I removed the plastic splash shield attached to the underside of the front bumper structure and the front crossmember. It’s in two pieces, and it is clear that some repairs/replacement fasteners were used here. There’s also a fair amount of abrasion damage to this area, like the front of the car impacted a pile of gravel. The seller told me this was due to an incompetent towing job. As I did this, a large quantity of dirt and gravel rained down on my face, even though I tried to prevent that from happening. Once the shield was off, I had access to the coolant drain plug and other parts. Everything looks to be pretty much in order, with some rusting here and there.
The transmission draining went fine. I used my 3/8″ socket wrench and a piece of conduit as a torque amplifier. The fluid looked clear and normal.
Since this engine has serious internal failure, I inspected the oil pan and see two places where parts punched a hole in it. I did not see any damage to the block, but I won’t know for sure until it’s out of the car and on the stand.
There was a good quantity of engine oil that drained out when I took the bolt off, and it was black as midnight. It smelled really bad too.
Finally, I drained the coolant. I removed the petcock from the bottom of the radiator, and coolant began to dribble out. I took of the radiator cap and it started gushing out, so I modulated the flow by keeping the cap on partially screwed in.
What I see as a positive is that the coolant drained out clear and greenish yellow. No “chocolate milk” syndrome, so I’m pretty confident that the coolant and oil was not mixing. It can be reasonably asserted the the engine isn’t failed so that the separation between coolant and oil passages are not breached.
So Saturday night ended with the vital fluids (except for the brakes) drained out of the car. Today I will remove hoses/electrical connections, and get the radiator out. Time permitting, I’ll move forward from there.
The garage was a complete mess, as I have never learned how to keep things uncluttered. Maybe this project will help in that.
I got the car rolled into the garage and put the front up on jackstands. The front jack points were rusted out, so I used the floor jack on the front tow hooks, and put the jackstands inboard on the car just aft of the engine. I think that’s the subframe crossmember, but I’m not sure. There was no creaking or groaning or deformation. Some others use the front control arms for the jackstand point. I think I’ll do same.
There was quite a controversy over on CRXcommunity about this topic. I learned that I can jack from a point in the center of the car, just behind the front bumper, and get both wheels in the air at once.
So nothing much done on the car other than PB Blastering every nut I might need to take off in the engine compartment, and just poring over the car and matching up what I’m seeing with what I’m reading.
I’ll use the rear tow hook to lift the rear wheels.
So the towing rig rolled into our home base just after dark on Tuesday, the 23rd of October. Heather needed to run straight out, because she had a program at the library that night, so I had to be content with sipping on a beer and standing at the front door staring at the car on the dolly.
The girls climbed in and had some fun blowing the horn. They really love doing that.
After Heather got home, I tried very unsuccessfully to push the car off of the dolly with Heather behind the wheel to apply skillful and timely braking when needed. Peter, our next door neighbor, just happened to be outside and asked if I needed help. I sure did. We couldn’t get the car over the hump, so his son Alex came out too. He seemed to have been sleeping, so that made me feel very bad and very humble for good neighbors.
Well the three of us gave one good heave and it was off the dolly and down the driveway.
The first order of business for me was to blast the car with clean water and wash and wax.
For some reason, I decided to work on Hondas. I was inspired by the late-model Civic hatchback we saw in the paddock that first night.
But what kind of Honda? Something small, something cheap. It was pretty much down to a Civic, but then I remember the “CRX”…a Civic-like vehicle that was very cool in its day. A thorough daily scouring of Cragslist uncovered one for sale in the Chesterton, Indiana area.
I started a correspondence with the seller. This particular car, a 1989 Honda CRX Si, with a stock D16A6 engine, had many problems. The engine was blown, had a history of overheating, a busted windshield, and a pretty good amount of body rust.
On the 19th of October, I sent out an email to my friends:
So the plot thickens.
Jason, the seller, called me tonight, unsolicited. Said he tried to reach me earlier and that from my emails, it sounded like I had a lot of questions so he wanted to chat.
He’s firm at $600 because he claims to be able to part it out for a good amount more than that, but doesn’t want to screw around doing that. If he can’t get $600 he will, though.
He did tell me he parted one thing off of it already…for some guys who were racing last weekend in Joliet. Asked me if that’s what I was talking about 🙂 I said, yeah. He said, yeah, they called me desperately and said they’d be right over and drove all of the way from Joliet to get the wiper motor and the armatures off of it.
- Block is pretty much shot, I’m assuming. He had a blown head gasket and drove it for a while before checking it out and noticed he was leaking coolant. #3 and #4 cylinders were polished mirror smooth, but he replaced the gasket and it drove “fine” after that, albeit burning a bit of oil.
- On his way to work one morning it started making a really bad knocking sound, he knew what that meant and before he could hit the exit the motor died. It “seized up” but he was able to unseize it and restart it. Oil came out the “front”, but he can’t see any holes in the block.
- He used it to go 100 mi. round trip from Michigan every day
- Got about 275,000 mi on the whole vehicle. Body has a decent amount of rust but the structural stuff is still intact.
- New brake parts, small leak in the right rear cylinder
- He lost his hood at one point and it busted the windshield. It has a new hood on it.
- Moonroof works, A/C parts are new but there’s a leak somewhere. It will charge up but all leak out after some time. It’s an R-12 system 🙁
- Hatch glass and head/marker/tail lights are all intact
- Interior is intact
Forgot to mention
- New front wheel bearings
- Transmission is still “great”, shifts perfectly, clutch only has about 50k miles on it, he has a “short shifter” on it.
Alan wrote me back:
It turns out that the pictures in the Craigslist ad were…flattering, in that the damage to the windshield and the 
far more extensive rust on the driver’sside is not immediately apparent. But the engine, apart from having a thrown rod, and the engine compartment seems to be in decent shape. The interior is in decent shape, and I have new front fenders and a whole bunch of spare parts in the trunk.
But I was sold. I picked it up on Tuesday the 23rd of October and brought it home on a dolly, using Mama and Daddy’s sweet Toyota Sienna.
The D16A6 is a 1.6 L, SOHC, 16-valve four cylinder that makes 108 hp. There seems to be a pretty decent sized aftermarket and it shouldn’t be too hard to rebuild the engine.
I’ve never tackled something like this before so it should certainly be a learning experience. That or Heather gets fed up and has it towed away.
We rewind the clock to the weekend of October 13-14, 2012. I was invited to participate in a crapcan race in Joliet, IL., “24 Hours Of Lemons/American Irony 2012”. The race was held at the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL. We were “Team Resignation” (Facebook page).
It was a cold, rainy, windy weekend. We were driving a ’91 Ford Escort. We had an animated Richard Nixon head on the top of the car. It was a complete and unbelievable adrenaline rush. I had a coolant leak while out on the track, and even though I was a complete rookie, in the rain, blinded by water and fogged up glasses, noticed the “Check Coolant” warning light. Throttled down and made it back into the pit and said,
“Hey, I got a ‘CHECK COOLANT’ light.”
Kiko said, “good thing you came in. The radiator is empty!”
Later in the day, I’m flying down the track and I notice the air intake box lean over about 30 degrees. Say, “well that can’t be good.” Back into the pits and good thing because the air box was being held on my the MAF sensor wires. Thankfully, I was not driving later in the day when the brake line was abraded through by the right front tire, and Alan had a complete brake failure going into turn one. The tire wall stopped him with minimal damage.
It was a terrific and exhilarating weekend. I was amazed at how handy the people were, and realized that this is not rocket science. I’ve always wanted to be able to do this kind of maintenance on a car.
Alan’s caution to me was, “I have to warn you that this may become addictive. You’ll be scouring the roadside for $500 cars.”